THE UNSPOKEN WORD, Palm Sunday - Matthew 26: 14 & 27: 11 to 54

Here’s a puzzle for you. If we remember the Lord’s Passion and Death on Good Friday, why do we ALSO read it on Palm Sunday?

When I was growing up - before the changes in Liturgy brought about by the Vatican II - the Fifth Sunday of Lent was called “Passion Sunday” and that’s when this Passion Gospel was read. The Sunday beginning Holy Week was called “Palm Sunday,” and the Gospel of Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem was featured.

Here’s what we know. There was a woman named Egeria who traveled widely throughout the Mediterranean in the late 300s. She kept a journal in which she described all the rituals of Holy Week and Easter. Her diary is the Church’s most detailed historical record of our most ancient Liturgies. From her we learn that Good Friday was celebrated before the creation of Palm Sunday. That may be why - of all the ceremonies of the Church - Good Friday seems out-of-joint. It’s odd because it’s older than most of our other Mass ceremonies.

If we were to place the four Gospels side by side, we would see that they are most like one another in their Passion narratives. The “Passion” begins with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and ends with His burial. There is the same basic cast of characters, with a few interchangeable actors; there are the same basic events, conversations and teachings.

In general, when all four Gospels are similar in content and in actual wording, we should pay attention the parts when they are NOT. So, let’s see what’s unique to Saint Matthew’s version of the story.

He, more than any other Evangelist, quotes Old Testament passages to highlight the events taking place. To do that, he has a painted a very strange picture of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Jesus tells His disciples to go into the city and bring back “an ass and its colt.” So far, okay. But then he tells us that Jesus mounted “them.” Not even Roy Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy was able to ride two horses at the same time! This tells us that the writers framed their story by finding Old Testament passages that seemed to describe the events of the Passion and then wrote their stories to fit the prophesies. (We’ll see it again in Judas’ “thirty pieces of silver,” in the crowds taunting Jesus on the cross, and when the soldiers “cast lots for Jesus’ garments.”)

We would never play so fast and loose with history - or even with fiction - for our own purposes. And, even if we did, we could get sued for plagiarism. So why did they?

They did not have the same attitude toward the written word as we. But they also had a deeper purpose. We have grown up knowing the basic stuff about Jesus. Moreover, our culture - secular as it may be - still has Christianity as its foundation. The first followers of Jesus did not. So imagine how these events must have impacted them! They would have had great difficulty putting their experiences into words. They must have had even greater difficulty trying to understand what it all meant. To the rescue came the sacred writings on which they had been reared. So they simply tacked onto their story those Old Testament quotations that helped them grasp their unique and life-changing experience of Jesus. Sometimes, like Matthew, they told us where the words came from. Sometimes, also like Matthew, they simply told Jesus’ story using images and words from older stories.

So what is this technique trying to tell us? Everything that happened during that fateful week in Jerusalem was the will of God. God’s will was to save a floundering humanity. Often, as we deal with news and try to make our way and make a living in our complicated world, we forget that God stands on our side of the battle. God wants us to succeed, not simply in the short run, but over the long haul. St. Augustine had the last word on this profound truth: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless ‘til they rest in Thee!”

There are many details unique to Saint Matthew’s Gospel but we do not have time to talk about each of them. We’ll hone in on just a few more.

So, here’s another puzzle. Saint Matthew is the only writer to tell us about the last hours of Judas’ life. In the other Gospels, Judas is the villain we can hiss and boo. He’s almost a cardboard cutout. But Matthew has remarkable compassion for this betrayer whose venal and cowardly action triggered Jesus’ doom.

Once again, he finds an Old Testament reference to rescue the situation: the detail of the “thirty pieces of silver.” Judas goes to the Sanhedrin - to his spiritual leaders who are supposed to care for his soul - to confess his perfidy: “I have betrayed innocent blood!” They turn a deaf ear and a cold shoulder. He had been their tool; they have sprung their trap; they can toss him aside. But he tosses back their blood money and goes off to end his shame by taking his own life. We who were raised to think of suicide as a grave evil do not recognize the significance of this scene. Judas has done what, in ancient society, was the only noble thing left to do: he has, so to speak, fallen upon his sword. Thank God, when we betray Christ by our sins, we have a kinder, gentler remedy - the one He died in order to give us. To Catholics, it is known as the Sacrament of Penance. The failure of ever-increasing numbers of Catholics to treasure this great gift is our own act of betrayal ... and Christ in confession forgives even that.

Only Saint Matthew tells us the strange story of Pilate’s wife and her dream. How would he know about that? Was there someone in the imperial household who became a Christian and revealed this intimate detail? Not likely. This is dramatic license ... but to what purpose? In the ancient world, dreams held great power, even among the sophisticated Roman elite. “I have suffered much in a dream,” she says, so “have nothing to do with this righteous man.” (Behind every great man there’s a woman. Too bad Pilate didn’t defer to his better half!) Saint Matthew wants us to understand that the universe itself quivered at this pivotal hour. The ancient world held its breath as Pilate equivocated over the fate of the very Person who had created him. Pilate chose political expediency, convenience and reputation over truth and justice. We live in a culture that likes to pick apart every thought, looking for hidden meanings, assigning values, taking sides, pointing fingers. Plausible deniability has replaced personal responsibility. “Do not judge,” said Jesus, “and you will not be judged.” We need to back off from all the spitting contests in which we engage and from which we seem to take perverse pleasure.

Facing Pilate, He speaks only twice. When Pilate asks Him directly, “Are you the ‘king of the Jews’?” Jesus answers ambivalently, “You say so.” In other words, “king” is the only term you can imagine for what I am. Or else you are just repeating what others have said about Me. Either way, you have to make up your own mind. So, to the governor’s question, “What have you to say in answer to the accusations your own people bring against you?” Jesus is non-responsive. The silence is deafening. Our culture is moving quickly to eradicate God and religion, and the values it implies, from every part of daily life. Again, that silence is deafening.

The next time Jesus speaks, He cries out to the universe at large, “Eli, Eli, lama sabbachthani!!” He is, of course, quoting from Psalm 22 and Saint Matthew expects us to know that. But He is also giving voice to every person abandoned and hopeless, wounded, beaten down, rejected, betrayed and despairing - in other words, to all of us. The Psalm has a dual purpose. It ends on a note of hopeful trust. “[The Lord] has not spurned the wretched man ... when he cried out to Him, He heard ...!” This speaks eloquently to our situation this Holy Week 2020. The entire world, undone by a microscopic germ, feels powerless and abandoned. Shaken from our certitudes and with our priorities turned upside down, we cry out to “Eli” in ways we had almost forgotten. God assures us, His “beloved,” that, in the long run, there will be rescue.

The earthquake in Saint Matthew’s Gospel takes center stage at the moment of Jesus’ death. How odd. Especially bizarre is the detail about tombs opening and holy zombies cruising around Jerusalem and - most notably - SEEN BY MANY. This detail is so striking that you would think EVERY Gospel would recount it. Nope. Only Saint Matthew’s. Even if it were true, it is misplaced. It refers to Jesus’ resurrection before he’s even buried. It is dramatic license once again.

Certainly, in the words of Saint Paul, Jesus was the “first born” of the dead, the “first fruits of the redemption.” We will rise because Christ is risen. But why place it here? We “see” what we want to see. When those we love die, we “see” them for months thereafter. (Remember the slew of “Elvis sightings” in the months following his death.) Because of the definitive saving deed of Jesus, we will “see” our loved ones again. We will know them more intimately than we ever did in this world. We will hold them “in Christ.” This is an upheaval more powerful than any earthquake. It turns our understanding of ourselves upside down.

The crucifixion of Jesus is the world’s “gamer changer.” Every year, we celebrate Easter. This year, we celebrate it “at a distance.” The Corona Virus is an avatar of the perennial challenge of evil. The Catholic Faith, in the last analysis, is about raising up our world because we have been raised; we have been raised because Christ has been raised. We are empowered to confront the “zombie apocalypse” that continually threatens our world.